


The Firmament

by KeizerHarm



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeizerHarm/pseuds/KeizerHarm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caesar is having the strangest dream... He is contained, yet freer than ever. But a voice calls, and he is defenestrated, landing in a mysterious place, with a mysterious long-dead Winchester, who wants to show him something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haruchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haruchicken/gifts).



_Ego slithered through his sphere. Movement was slow, strange forces pushed and pulled and squeezed and stretched. He was contained, yet freer than ever, in having become more aware than before. A barrier materialised in front of him. His eyes were closed, but he would not have seen the difference anyway, for he felt the edge of his world with a part of his body. Before touching it, he hadn't even known his body had parts to it._  
  
_Squirming to test the muscles, peaceful as it may be, the Firmament vibrated. It came from everywhere, but turning around revealed that in some directions it was stronger than in others. Slowly came Ego's first experience with sound. Bass, calm and melodic, kept drumming through his whole body, and over time patterns became recognizable. Different units of noise became more distinguished by the day, and an over-active mind strung the phonemes together to words, and through a process combining guesswork with some kind of magic he could not comprehend, meanings were assigned to them. It was rather easy once you had figured out that they had meaning at all, the rest was playing with a million-piece tangram until the picture made sense._  
  
Caesar briefly pulled back. His vision and thoughts were fuzzy, he just had a newfound control over reliving past experiences, and did not wonder where it came from. His actual body was asleep in some forgotten colony, but the mind had entered a completely different realm. He reenveloped himself in the feelings, in his primal experiences that had led to him being himself. He tasted something sharp and bitter, like the ashes from a burnt kangaroo he had had once, but he shooed the sense away.  
  
_Before Ego knew any words, he had started to distinct between several categories of vibration. One was the dominant, bassy and often calm, but one other seemed to use the same amount of words in a shorter time span, and most of them had a tone to them Ego took as unpleasant. The vibration of the Firmament alternated between those categories, but sometimes both were felt at the same time. It took him not long to find the word for it:_ **arguing** _. Bass was arguing. Bass could often be driven by the challenger to start putting more power in his voice, and when they were arguing, all the other categories faded to background chatter._  
  
_The biggest change was when, due to a surge of some essence of himself that made its way to his bloodstream, Ego realised that Bass and the other one were beings, nothing different from himself. He was floating in his sphere, surrounded by the Firmament, inside which other entities lived, who could communicate. Ego squirmed. His muscles boiled, his nerves were singed, and his brain burned. He wanted to communicate! He wanted a voice! Bass would often talk of entities that had stopped existing long ago, of nutrition, of some place called China he cared a great deal about. Ego did not. He wanted the freedom of expression! Was that too much to ask, for one existing only for such a short time? It wasn't, he knew it!_  
  
Caesar's mouth was full of ashes now. He tried to spit it out, but more would keep spawning. A pleasant memory provided distraction.  
  
_Ego desired freedom. The Firmament was responsible for not giving him a voice. It had shrunk dramatically over the past time, and left him so little room to move. He was stuck, and so, so hungry. He used his whole body, and stretched, bumped, pushed, rammed. Bass noticed, and started discouraging it. Ego took it as the worst imaginable insult. Why should Bass get a voice, but not himself? A crack! - something from it came, so alien that he could not assign it by any word other than "light", one of the stranger substances Bass had told him about. He slammed himself against the crack, and little bits broke off, more of this light substance entered his sphere. He charged, and headbutted the hole with the strength of all of his body and mind, and suddenly full freedom was there, but much stranger than he had imagined. The intense daylight burned his retinas, as he had never used them before. The ooze he had thought the entire universe was filled with, was replaced by something sharp and thin, but Ego's muscles rejoiced with their liberty. A dark shadow appeared above him. Bass, when he had still been friendly, had taught him of this. "No, I won't have any of that," were Caesar's first words, his lips still wet and fresh, and -_  
  
"Caesar? Caesar, are you there?"  
  
He was startled so much he left the memory to evaporate, and the environment returned to an undefined grey mist. But the ashes were so intense, it was like someone had been nailing his forked tongue to a plank. They pulled at him, in the direction of the new voice. It was a weak and high-pitched one, almost chirpy, and coming from a great distance. "What?" was all he felt a suitable reply.  
  
"Caesar, you are there! Come to me, please, if you want, I want to see you!"  
  
From the direction of the voice, the mists opened and a somewhat murky greyish light shone through a tunnel. It felt warm, but not like sunlight, more like a big demon was breathing on him, minus the moist. Caesar felt his head being pulled towards it, and the pain in his mouth made him follow; it relieved with every pace. Moving was not quite walking, flying, or even swimming, probably a strange hybrid, but he wasn't concentrating on it, which is why it wasn't defined. This was still his  _own_ dream area. He was about to leave it.  
  
  
Going through the tunnel, his head started to jump back and forth between feeling light and heavy, and nausea and euphoria alternated in increasingly rapid succession. Itches spread over his body like fires on the grassy plains of Terra Australis. Something pulled at his lower abdomen, and then it snapped, leaving a sore spot. Gravity, which had been uniform until now, angled, and Caesar found himself to be falling; the light and dark, pressure and relief, hot and cold, torment and elation blinked like a stroboscope from hell and heaven. He gained extreme speed, going about thrice as fast as what he had imagined possible without his intestines leaving him through the back door, and then doubled velocity once more.  
  
The clouds retreated to the far sides, light and darkness both faded, the blinking was no longer recognizable, and in front of him, a large grey plane appeared. Or wait, it was not in front, it was below, and at this terrifying speed he expected to be reduced to a splat on whatever it was made of. Caesar began to feel wind, it ripped at his wings, and pulled them right behind him.  
  
He was almost at the floor. It was grey rocks, or tiles, something geometric yet somehow irregular in a pattern he could not decipher as the new atmosphere made his eyes tear. Caesar tried to slow down by putting all of his strength in extending his left wing the tiniest bit, but with a sickening sound, it slammed back, and the great pain a second later told him that the muscles had strained beyond their normal reach, and the bones were disjointed. The wind disfigured his face, and the last thoughts before hitting was that at least it would be an instant death, without pain. He said goodbye to Jeremy, and closed his eyes.  
  
  
He was wrong. The impact broke every single bone in his body, most of them shattered into particles no larger than a grain of sand. Every muscle was squished, lots of them ripped. Arteries broke, everything filled with blood. But the skin held together, and for some reason his mind was still there. He could only thank for the instant quadriplegia when his spine disconnected from his brain, meaning he did not feel anything.  
  
"Caesar, are you there? Talk to me, if you will please."  
  
What was this? How were his ears still working? And why was this stupid being not seeing that he was a broken mess, and incapable of anything even faintly resembling speech? "Shut up." he muttered, and went back to waiting for his death.  
  
"Ah, you can speak. Don't worry, you will soon be all right, there's no injuries or death here."  
  
Good God, how he had spoken?  
  
And as Caesar puzzled, immeasurable forces gently reshaped his body to how he was used to it. The bone fragments liquefied, every atom found its place, and crystallised back into the familiar mass. Blood streamed back to where it was supposed to be, nerves, arteries and muscles grew together, and before long his heart started beating again. He turned to a lying position, his tail wrapped around him, almost - no, exactly how it had been positioned when he had fallen asleep. What, when had he fallen asleep?  
  
Caesar opened eyes that had not had their healthy shape a second before, and as his retina healed he began to see around him. It was some kind of a valley, but the strangest one he had ever seen, the tiled floor creating the most amazing curling patterns, and at the horizon tiles raised up to form pillars, creating the impression of hills. Clouds formed half a sphere above him, dark grey on light grey. The only visible object that stood out from the endless monochromatic landscape and sky, was a single brown and purple creature, a dragon, of the species he seemed to recall was a Winchester, though he did not know if he had ever seen one before. He stood up, and felt the urge to yawn.  
  
The dragon was standing a little insecure, rubbing his paws against one another, and looking tentatively at him. Caesar saw white cloth around his midsection, it was wrapped very tightly, and clean as silk.  
  
"Where am I? How did I get here?" he asked a bit defensively, not knowing how to proceed in the strange circumstances. He appeared to be held in some distant land, almost killed and healed by the same dragon, who was almost trembling on his skinny legs just a few meters from him.  
  
"Oh, you were dreaming, but now you have left your dream and came here. This is where I am, and a lot of others too, but in this area we're alone."  
  
Caesar was dissatisfied by the vague answer. "And did you take me here? And when can I leave?"  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"What do you mean? Did you not bring me here, or are you saying that I cannot leave at all? Tell me!" he snapped in annoyance.  
  
The Winchester backed away. He was a great deal smaller than Caesar, but even for that he was easily shaken. "I'm not sure, Caesar. You came here, I did not."  
  
"How do you know my name? And stop avoiding the question, you filthy animal, you're the one who called me!"  
  
He cowered even more, and shrunk a little. "I.. All I know, is that there's some things you could do; they could help you get back to your own dream. You can't wake from this place, this isn't your dream. But we should hurry, there's not much time."  
  
Caesar rubbed his paw on his forehead. He did not know how was he going to extract information from this annoying little guy. "I don't want to do anything, brat. I want to get out, and you called me, so you know where to go from here. I want to go back to my captain, and the real world! I already dislike this place: it is boring, and completely unsuitable for the dragon of the son of a high Earl!"  
  
"You have to follow me."  
  
"Are you deaf?!"  
  
"No, but you have to follow me, to get back, to your... captain. And quickly, before it is too late for you and me."  
  
Caesar cursed quietly. He was stuck, under the control of a magical dragon who did not make sense, and did not feel like he was in charge at all. "I will follow you, for as long as I need to, to get back to my captain, and not a second beyond that!"  
  
The little one unexpectedly gave a little squeak of what seemed almost joy - although his face returned to stoic the second after - and darted away, jumping over the grey floor, in a direction where Caesar saw faintly something large emerging from the ground, off near the horizon. "Then follow me, Caesar. I'm Levitas."  
  
"Doesn't ring a bell." he mumbled. It sounded very faintly familiar, but he hadn't heard the name in a very long time.


	2. Chapter 2

"Why are you slouching?"  
  
"I am not."  
  
"No, you are." Caesar gestured to the quiet courier. "Your belly is almost scraping the floor."  
  
"I see."  
  
Caesar sighed, for the sixth time on their little five-minute stroll to who-knew-what. "What, do you see?"  
  
"That we are almost there."  
  
"Were you always such a bore, or did you change after death, Velitas?"  
  
"I did change a bit, but my name didn't."  
  
"I'm starting to remember stuff, Tevilas. Something about Temeraire warning me about you before I hatched... It's been a while ago. I don't recall how you died, but I know that you did. So we're in heaven, somehow, though I wouldn't like spending eternity in this dull place. Say, did you know anyone named Jeremy Rankin? I am thinking to ask him about you when I get out of here."  
  
Levitas sped up his walking pace, leaving Caesar behind him.  
  
Caesar watched the fellow. He did slouch, his shoulder blades stuck up unnaturally, and his back was stretched downwards in a way that couldn't be healthy. Since injuries healed in heaven, it must have been a voluntary habit, rather than forced by failing anatomy. Seeing the little creature walk was interesting. One side of his white wrapped bands had gotten loose, and it fluttered as he walked. And he kept shaking a bit with every step. He looked like he was expecting the ground to collapse below him any second.  
  
"Why didn't we fly all this way?" he asked, when the huge structure was finally within reach.  
  
"There will be plenty of flying later." Levitas replied. Caesar shook it off, and stopped to behold what was in front of him.  
  
  
He could not see enough of it to get a good picture of the shape. Only a wall, stretching in every direction for as far as he could see. That included upwards. Caesar craned his neck and peered to the very top, where the dark grey lightened from the air. He thought he could see a rim, but at that altitude the contrast between wall and sky was too little to make out the edge.  
  
"This is my box." Levitas said faintly, something of a warmth slipping into his voice. He too gazed at the surface, empty-eyed, mentally absent. Caesar felt something, and then he heard it. Soft, distant tones, definitely music, but he could not figure where the sound was coming from. Violins?  
  
"What's that noise, Winchester?" he barked. Levitas quivered a little, and shook his head, the strings disappearing simultaneously. The tune had fit the powerful sight of the building perfectly, like a golden necklace to a pearl. "This is my box," he repeated, "my section of the Firmament."  
  
"The Firmament?"  
  
"Yes, that's what I feel like calling it. But my box, you will have to enter it. I think.., no you must enter it. You should enter it."  
  
"All right, Velitelavas, no need to be repetitive, my ears are just fine, as you must know, for you have been in the place longer than I have, I presume. Now how do I enter? There's no door or arch or gate, silly nincompoop!"  
  
Levitas nodded. He looked at a single point on the solid wall, which was constructed of rough bricks, but every single stone was identical, with the exact same irregularities and cracks. It gave Caesar an alienating feel, but not as much as that single point starting to move inwards, taking a part of the wall with it, which began to behave like a liquid. The hole expanded greatly, the bottom of it touched the floor, and when Caesar blinked it had became a tunnel, the end shrouded in darkness.  
  
He shrugged, putting effort in appearing completely unimpressed to Levitas' magic. He started walking forward, but did notice he had to bend down and fold his wings tightly against his body, for the opening was narrow for him. The Winchester could have flown in.  
  
  
As soon as the tip of his tail had gone in, his nose hit something. "Okay, little mutt, what now? You're going to have to give some directions to your aide-de-camp, if - " He could not finish his sentence because his mouth was full. The wall had turned liquid again. It cascaded down on him, heavy, warm and moist. He could not back out, behind him everything was closed and solid. Caesar panicked, convulsed his body to try to shake the closing mass off, but there was nothing else left around him. It occurred to him that he might choke, before  _the liquid cooled and got thinner. He opened his eyes again, not remembering when he had closed them. For the second time in a minute, his eyes widened to capture the magnificent sight._  
  
 _He was flying. It was night, there were stars above him, but less than he remembered, and in different places. The below was more interesting. A second hemisphere of skylights, but below, all yellowish, and peeking out from buildings. He had seen Sydney from above, but not from this high, and not this much Sydney. Even the cities in India were incomparable. The city stretched on for dozens of miles, the night hiding all the darkened places, leaving just the endless lights._  
  
 _"Higher, higher, they will spot us!" someone on top of him whisper-shouted. He had never had a single person this heavy on top of him before, it had to be a giant. Or wait, he felt lighter too. Something was different. His skin... why was it purple? And he had never flown this high or fast before, what kind of nonsense was the giant spouting?_  
  
"Sorry, interference." _he heard Levitas say, but it was only in his head._ "This is hard, I've never had to do this before."  
  
"Never had to do what?" _Caesar thought back, but he suddenly felt his limbs jolt to their original size, his wingbeat slowing down, and the guy on his back got a great deal lighter. It was still not what he was used to, though._  
  
 _"Get higher, you utterly useless reptile!" Caesar thought he recognized the voice. But it was too confusing to tell. Every experience was layered in a blur of emotions. The man's voice, it sounded just like Rankin's. But the picture did not match. He felt actually hurt by the downtalk. He felt like had deserved the punishment, and wanted to make it right by increasing his wingbeat frequency before his mind even thought of whether he thought himself they needed to get higher or not. The voice was almost exactly Rankin's, but it did not feel the same way. It was an exact replica, but still an obvious fake._  
  
 _Ascending was difficult, the air was already much thinner and colder than he was used to. In fact, it was impossible; he could not keep up the speed, he did not have the body for it, and started dropping down. The fake Rankin cursed. Caesar spotted the reason below: a full formation, in direct pursuit. He somehow knew all the names for the breeds: there was a Flamme-de-Gloire, some Defendeur-Braves, a couple Guarde-de-Lyons and three Petit Chevaliers. Caesar knew he could outfly the heavyweights, on a good day he was faster than Temeraire and anything his size or bigger. This day had better be good._  
  
 _He braced himself, checked every muscle, and rallied them to the cause: beat them to the sea. It was shimmering in the distance, reflecting moonlight. He moved through the air, no grace, just pure force, directed by his mind, being transformed to kinetic energy, to propel his body onwards. No effort was great enough for his captain. He did not fear the French, despite their shining teeth, heavy grumbling breaths, razor-sharp claws, all things he wouldn't have noticed in such detail had he been himself right then. It was the man's disapproval he feared. It was an obvious fake. Levitas was messing with him._  
  
 _His eyes swept over the ground, where the city had made place for the harbour. On a huge field right next to it, mastless ships lay on dry ground. Or wait, they did have masts, but they were lain sideways, two across each deck, extending out from it enough to have space for a dragon to grab on to. "Don't bother to look at that, just keep flying." the fake Rankin said, but Caesar heard in his voice that it was very important. Yet he followed the orders, and concentrated on streamlining his body to the optimal position. He would get his captain back to England, even if it was the last thing he ever di- why did he think of it like that?_  
  
  
 _The pursuers were getting farther behind him, was what Caesar saw from a brief look back when he had just gotten above the water. Now it was only a short trip to the other side of the Channel, to Dover, where over the white chalky cliffs a warm meaty welcome awaited him, and iron for the French. He looked forwards, peered at the horizon, wanting to see the coast. But he got dots, right above the horizon. A little hope jumped up that it was an English patrol, beyond their usual reach to escort him and his captain back. But it was not to be so. French, right ahead. French, right behind._  
  
 _"Caesar." Rankin said. The name felt a bit strangely in his mouth, he was mispronouncing it slightly, but Caesar could not put a claw on how exactly. "Caesar," the fake captain continued, "do you think you are going to have any food after this? You're wrong. If we do not escape this, I will personally see to it that you will be tied to a boat and shipped off to Russia. Your days of smothering in my warmth will be over. The jewels I have given you; I will have them smelted down. If you fail me now, it will be the last thing you will do on a full stomach. You will not fail me, because I say you won't. So now you are going to make a manoeuvre that will lead us to England, to spread the news of my discovery. You are not going to let a Frenchmen leak their blood on my coat. You will deliver me, and win the war, and you will do it now, or suffer the consequences if you fail me."_  
  
 _"I will not fail you! I promise, by God, I will get you home safe!" Caesar yelped it out without thinking of it. He was going to do the best he could. There were enemies in front of him, enemies behind him. All of them were heavier than he. He now felt quick and light again, not what he had weighed since he had been a hatchling. He was tired. His stomach grumbled. But his motivation was the best it had ever been. A cool veneer settled over his thoughts. He would get Rankin home._  
  
 _Caesar started angling to the north, to get distance between himself and both groups of pursuers. He calculated how long it would be before he could turn left, to dodge the second formation. It was a flight of ten minutes, to be secure. God knew how happy he would have been with five._  
  
 _The third formation, right north, appeared after two minutes._  
  
 _"Curses!" Rankin barked. "West, Caesar, straight west. We can't dodge them safely. Do what is necessary, and do not fail me!"_  
  
 _Caesar obeyed. It was suicide, flying right into an enemy formation._  
  
  
 _It was over very quickly. Last-ditch escape attempts, such as folding wings and dropping down a few hundred feet, had spared him immediate death. But on the way down, he had felt something. It turned out to be roughly forty pounds of tendon, which were snapped right through, and the ends retreated deeply into the sides of the wound. Smaller cuts were felt too, but this thing was the worst injury he had ever endured. Still, he felt little pain from it. Too much endorphins. The emotional pain was worse. Rankin was injured. It was something in his leg. He felt the bullet as much as his captain did. The tiniest grunt awoke the blazing guilt in Caesar, and he felt a terrible dragon._  
  
  
 _They got back to Dover. Rankin got off, was helped to walk back, people cheered for his heroism. Caesar was abandoned. Everyone left his small clearing. After an hour surgeon came. He examined the massive wound, now starting to pain him greatly, but shook his head, and left. Caesar felt the power leave him, as the stars above grew fainter. Was the morning near? Or was he losing consciousness? A biting insecurity kept lingering, not for whether he would survive to see sunrise, but for whether Rankin would. It was his sole fixation._  
  
  
"Bloody hell!" he screamed. He was in a blazing light, and the foreign emotions washed away like sandcastles in a cloudburst. His slit pupils narrowed, and the contrast improved. He was outside the box again, the wall taking up a third of the sky. Levitas was squatting near him, wiggling his tail, a pale, bland look on his face, but also of relief.  
  
Caesar felt the heavy blanket drop off him; he was rational again. He got up, and made a very threatening pose to the little courier. "You! You, why did you lock me up in, that fake place, a pretend-world designed to hurt me!? Who do you think you are!? Double bloody hell, I nearly believed it. I now know why Temeraire warned me of you, you are an evil wizard, and must be defeated even in afterlife!"  
  
Levitas shuffled back. "I... it was really hard, to... I am sorry. I do not regret it, I am not sorry, it is for the right, I..." He stopped gibbering as soon as Caesar planted his front paw on his back, pinning him to the ground. "For doing that to me, Levitas, I am going to tear you to shreds. See if that will heal. And if it does, I will simply have to do it once more, and over and over again, for I have  **all eternity**  to keep doing it!!"  
  
He did not have the time to draw blood. Out of nowhere, a new dragon appeared, and jumped against Caesar, rolling them both over, before pushing him away and jumping down a few body-lengths away. He was very old, of the Malachite Reaper breed, if Caesar remembered correctly, though his memories were now confused and conflicting. Caesar was enraged. He wanted to launch himself against this new competitor, but the dragon paid no attention to him, just Levitas. He actually started sobbing. Levitas looked back.  
  
"F-Forgive me..." the unexpected guest stammered. "All those years, I have l-let you be terrorised..., I allowed it... I turned the other way whenever I saw it, I dodged the axe myself and... please, for.." His voice broke. Levitas was motionless.


	3. Chapter 3

Caesar groaned, trying to fight his instincts against attacking crying elders. He did not comprehend what terror the old dragon was talking about, or why it was hurting him so much. Sentimental old folks, he thought. Or perhaps Levitas was bullied in life. But how could he have "dodged the axe" himself?  
  
"Do you remember me, Levitas? I suppose you haven't seen me often, but I was training master in Loch Laggan. I died not long ago, and wanted to find you. My name is Celeritas, does that sound familiar?" His voice was ragged from age and extensive use, but soft.  
  
Levitas nodded, a tiny bit. But he shook his head forcibly, almost immediately after. "I do not want to see you, Celeritas."  
  
Caesar did not understand a thing of the situation. Celeritas turned his head at him. "I think I can guess who you are. The mongrel, who was supposed to be Rankin's newest victim. But you were selfish enough to resist, and became just as bad as him in the process."  
  
"Mongrel?" Caesar spouted, feeling insulted. "Victim?" he added, feeling confused. He knew Rankin as a proper gentleman, a caring man and a good influence on his environment, from the day of his hatching. What was he talking about?  
  
"Time for a little history," Celeritas began, a very harsh tone in his voice. "Jeremy Rankin's grandpa, Arthur Wadlow, was my captain for fifty years. His son, Jeremy's uncle, followed. Proper aviators, a little stiff, but people to make England proud. Jeremy was a terror. His upbringing had given him strange notions about how dragons should behave, and their position at the feet of man. He ought never have been been an aviator, much less a captain."  
  
"You are lying!" Caesar spat. "That was a fake vision, and nothing like the truth. My captain is a man of honour, his father is the Earl of Kensington, a title from the twelfth century, and he knows more about dragons than any of you!"  
  
"Jeremy's treatment of Levitas," Celeritas droned on: "was one alternating between neglect and abuse! The "man of honour" liked to play chess and drink tea with his peers, leaving Levitas alone in his field, a small and uncomfortable one, for days. He would forbid him from leaving it, unless he ordered him to. He commanded Levitas to lower his body for him to step on, so he did not have to climb. Ninety percent of his words to him were of hurtful tone, designed to put him down, from the moment of his hatching. Ninety percent of Levitas' words to Jeremy were of apology, the other ten of gratitude for every shimmer of personal attention. One time, when Levitas disobeyed his orders, and flew down to the lake to have a bath with Temeraire and two others, Jeremy was furious. He used the most cutting words against him, Levitas was depressed for days."  
  
Caesar stood his ground. "You're a filthy old liar. I'm not listening to you. If Rankin was really Levitas' captain, then it is Levitas himself who made up the abuse. What could even have given you the idea to have support such slander?" He paused, and then suddenly grinned and nodded. "Aah, I get it. Well done, Levitas, I must admire your skill: I am still dreaming! Well, I can proudly announce that I did not lose my temper this time, meaning I can finally get out of here! Or do you wish for me to slay this illusion? I would like to try, perhaps you conjured him with more power than his aged exterior suggests. Right?"  
  
Levitas gave no reaction. He was staring blankly at Celeritas. "Come on, Levitas, I've had enough of it. I will not kill you, not that I know how, but my patience is up. Are you going to keep up the stoic, or will you give me some truthful information for how to be a better dragon for Rankin or something?"  
  
"I do not want to see you, Celeritas!" Levitas said with power hard to comprehend as belonging to his chirpy voice.  
  
"But Levitas, I want to see you!" the elder one cried out, going from hard training master to sentimental elder in a heartbeat. It occurred to Caesar as unreal, the polarised emotions, and supported his conclusion that this Celeritas was artificial. "I want to see you, we all want to see you, we are waiting for you!"  
  
Levitas breathed in, and stoop up straighter. "No, you are not, Celeritas, because you are not real. I do not want to see you, go away!" Celeritas made no attempts at leaving. "Come on, Levitas, are you now going to pretend you have lost control over your constructs?" Caesar asked fretfully, but Levitas shook his head. "This is something I must do."  
  
"You are turning less believable by the second." he grunted.  
  
"It's over. I can't focus for much longer." Levitas pranced, and when the forelegs landed he made a strange chirping roar, like a very angry bird. But there was more power behind it than just volume. Defying the laws of physics and geometry, Celeritas' body shot up to the sky, but his head remained in place for a moment, looking at Levitas in deep distress. "Why?" his lips moved, but there was no noise, and as the last remnants of the vision faded away, Levitas groaned and collapsed to the ground.  
  
  
"Levitas? Come on, Levitas, don't you die on me! What are you, sleeping?" Caesar was more confused than anything, but he knew that the Winchester was his only way out of the Firmament. He examined the unconscious body with his nose, before putting a paw around the skinny middle and folded out his wings. Either Levitas was the most elaborate liar in the world, or something really complicated was going on with him.  
  
He noticed the sky looked a lot darker than he remembered from entering. He recalled it was daytime when he "landed" in the middle of the plain of geometric tiles, though he did not see the sun, there were only curling light grey clouds on a uniform dark grey background. But both were a tad darker than now, it was as if it was dusk, but there was nothing to tell the time.  
  
Caesar flew in a helix, taking a long vertical distance to the top of the cubical building he had spent the time in. The air got bit thinner and colder as he ascended, but it also felt cleaner, less murky. He figured it would help wake Levitas. He made an awkward landing manoeuvre on the roof, but eventually set him close to the edge. He looked over, and for the first time saw the other buildings. He had not seen them at first, because the cube dwarfed them all, but most of them were in such a ruined state he didn't think he would have been very interested in them anyway.  
  
Enough sightseeing, he figured. "Come on, Levitas, I need you to wake up!" He shook the body, and an eyelid slip open. Levitas took a heavy breath, and spoke so softly Caesar had to put his head closer to him to hear it at all. "It's too bad Celeritas came. I thought I could have kept him under control, but sometimes my mind wanders off, and my emotions are always there to strike when they have the chance. It has been so difficult, for all these years, to keep my mind focussed, but if I let go, I may vanish for all eternity."  
  
Caesar did not understand most of it. "Stop talking, Levitas, I just need you to tell me where the other dragons are. Celeritas spoke of them, they may know what is wrong with you, and they can let me out of this place, back to the real world."  
  
Levitas groaned, and Caesar shut his mouth for now. "You don't understand, Caesar. We are alone. There are no other dragons. I have been here alone since the moment of my death, and my spirit will evaporate the second I let it. I have been building stuff to keep me occupied for the years, and what you saw of Celeritas was my emotions taking power for a brief while. They showed me what I wanted to see, not what was useful. It was nothing like a real person, it was my ignoble desires manifested."  
  
"So you wanted to make me feel bad, and your emotions summoned Celeritas to do that for you?"  
  
"No. I hold no grudge against you. I, my emotions, wanted someone to stand up for me. It is silly, and should not have happened. My captain would have been so angry, had he seen any of this. Even the memory, now I see I shouldn't have done it."  
  
"Hold on, what memory? The night's flight?" The thought alone gave him a powerful headache.  
  
"Yes. It was how I died. But Rankin had reasons for everything he did, a festering virus of egocentricity inside me did not agree with those reasons, and summoned the old training master to dishonour my discipline. I did not want you to see it. I did not want to see it myself either, but sometimes I do, and it is a comfort."  
  
He lowered his head, and shook it. "I do not believe it. My captain is of noble birth, a gentleman, he would never hurt any dragon for taking a bath. And his way of persuasion in battle is not down-talk like in that thing, he makes accurate statements, and together we figure out what to do. That's how we turned down the Australian rebellion. This was nothing like it. Nothing at all, really."  
  
"Think what you want, Caesar. Sometimes I believe my mind imagined it, because it is selfish, and wants to see me getting more warmth than is appropriate, and fakes sights of other Winchesters having captains who love them like their first-borns."  
  
Caesar sighed. He did not know what to do about the situation, he had some thinking to do. He first concentrated on the most obvious problem. "So, when can I leave? And how?"  
  
Levitas closed his eyes. "You can leave now, if you want. In fact, you should do it immediately, this place is collapsing. When I first got here, the sky was pure white, now it is almost anthracite. I am losing myself. Without my body, my mind has had a hard time keeping itself together, and over the years it has gotten weaker. Taking you here took the last bits of my energy, I have been limping forward ever since."  
  
"So, how do I leave?" he asked, starting to feel something ominous coming. Levitas' indirect way of replying was very annoying.  
  
"I, do not know for sure."  
  
"Come on, that's a bad joke." he grumbled. "You took me here, you must know how to put me back in my dream, or even to help me awake."  
  
"I just wanted you here, that's how it happened. After having lived here for so long, I start getting impressions of the outside world from this place. My spirit can sometimes reach out, and touch other minds. In a burst of selfishness some time ago, I tried to contact my captain. He happened to be dreaming, and I shut my mouth, it was inappropriate to intrude on his personal space, and I did not belong there. But he dreamt of you, Caesar. I got an impression of you, and used it to find you, wait until you were asleep deep enough, and call for you. I wanted you here, to make sure you were a proper dragon. I reached out, grabbed you by the tongue, which is the easiest part of a spirit to grab for a very complicated reason, and called your name. You answered the call, and that did the rest. A bridge was created, and as you left your dream, it imploded behind you." Levitas sighed. "I do not know how you can return. I'm pretty sure you can, you do not belong here. But the how is a mystery for me. I think you should just fly to the edge of the world, and focus really hard on wanting to go back to your body. That's almost like how I got you here, after all."  
  
  
Caesar's head was sore. He was aching to get home. But Levitas was a very strange dragon. If Rankin had not been his captain, how could he have found him in the first place? If his story was true, however far twisted from the accurate reality it may be, if Rankin had been his captain; that changed a few things. If it was real, that night's flight, and what followed. It had been terrifying. What mind would make that up? He had shifted between a Winchester shape and himself throughout the vision. Levitas had called it interference.  
  
Theoretically, he could have constructed such a thing, to appear as if it was for a Winchester. It would have to had taken quite some time. All to torment a dragon he hardly had a connection to. Rankin had once taught Caesar of Occam's razor. He felt that it had some credibility. Levitas was a very strange dragon. But something had happened to him. Something involving his captain.  
  
  
"So, I guess this is goodbye. Do you have anyone in the real world you would like to pass a message to? What should I say to Rankin?"  
  
Levitas inhaled deeply. "Please, do not tell anything about me to our captain. He would feel uncomfortable, I think. I do not want to remind him of how bad a dragon I was, it is not right. You must be a far greater dragon than I am, if you do not understand Celeritas' words... or perhaps it is proof that I did make everything up, that my selfish mind imagines mistreatment because it is never happy with anything. I do not know, sorry. You could tell Temeraire about it, though. Do you know him?"  
  
"I do..." He despised him. "If I see him, I will tell him. I don't even know where he went after the war. Either England or China, and I'm far away from both."  
  
"He went to China?" Levitas chuckled a little.  
  
"Yep, and his captain became a king of China, or something." Caesar wasn't really happy with boasting of Temeraire's achievements, but they were making Levitas happy, and somehow that was reason for him to do so. He quickly shrug off the misplaced feeling of compassion; it did not feel like himself. More fake emotions floating around in the place. "So, goodbye then. The edge of the world, is that far away?"  
  
Levitas smiled. "Goodbye, Caesar. It shouldn't be too long a flight now, it has been getting closer."  
  
"Closer?" he asked, now feeling confused for not being able to leave him just yet. "You mean, you're losing control over the world, and it is shrinking?"  
  
"No..." Levitas replied. For the first eight years or so, my concentration has been stable, but the Firmament kept shrinking regardless. I suppose it is to put me out of my misery, though it is slow enough it will take years before I get stuck or anything."  
  
"The Firmament is shrinking, you say?"  
  
"That's what I said."  
  
Caesar had an idea, it was just a hunch, and probably based on a stupid coincidence, but he needed to find it out. "Levitas, do you think you could fly with me, to the edge? I need to check something."  
  
"I can't. My energy is going to keeping this place intact. If I let go of my concentration, bad things may happen to these plains, I don't even know what."  
  
"Then don't keep everything intact. Only use energy for clearing a narrow path to the edge. Let the rest of this place be destroyed, you will not spend more time in it anyway." Levitas drifted away, and Caesar shook him to keep him awake.  
  
"Hmm? Ok, I guess I will do that. I should show you out properly, even if it is at the cost of a home I will not be occupying for much longer."  
  
Levitas breathed in, his chest swell, and some warmth came to his greyed face. Simultaneously, a deep vibration was felt throughout all of their sphere. It was like a million firecrackers, slow and stretched out it roared through both the air and the ground. The entire universe was collapsing.  
  
Levitas stood up, fresh in energy. "Well, let's get going then, shall we? Let's make it a race!"  
  
  
The second they took off, cracks appeared in the roof building, and when Caesar looked back half a minute later the entire side of the building had broken down, revealing something like a honeycomb of chambers. Below on the ground, the tiles were turning into dust, and getting swept up by suddenly appearing powerful winds, though they moved slowly, as if suspended in a liquid. The clouds churned heavily, started blinking between dark and light. He smelled something sulphuric, and the air felt like it was getting thicker, despite them ascending.  
  
They moved vertical as much as they did horizontal, now together after Levitas had shown that the courier was indeed a great deal faster than the middleweight. Caesar had tried to be as fast as he could, since all Levitas cared about was him being a good dragon for Jeremy Rankin. His head hurt from the thought.  
  
Celeritas was seen again in the distance, flying to them. So was Temeraire - a smaller version of him than he remembered, and two dragons Caesar did not recognize. "Do we have to do anything about them?" he asked loudly, overcoming the wind. Levitas peered in their direction, and shook his head. "Too far away, we'll be in the clouds before they get anywhere near us."  
  
"And what if Temeraire uses his Divine Wind?"  
  
"Divine Wind? What's that? Or wait, don't tell me. Temeraire here is only as powerful as I remember him as."  
  
Caesar quickly rolled up his tongue, but he could feel the wind picking up force. Who knew whether it was influenced by his words, going straight to Levitas' mind, and materialised in the Firmament. But it was gaining power in more ways. It felt heavy, like a waterfall, and pushed them in random directions. He swore he could feel the gravity move.  
  
They finally reached the layer of clouds, which formed an arc over the entire world. The air was now thicker than syrup, but the clouds were even denser, like a rubber membrane. Breathing was getting hard too. "This is how far I go, Caesar! I suppose you should try to dig yourself in a cloud, and wish yourself home."  
  
"Wait, just a second!" Caesar called back. It was not familiar, or was it. It was such a faint memory. It wasn't even a proper memory he could recount whenever he wanted to. It was something he could only dream of.  
  
Caesar turned around, and flew away from the wall of clouds some distance. He saw Temeraire getting closer. But more than that, he heard vibrations. He felt them, through his body. They were omnipresent, but came from a direction, outside the Firmament. It was like something he knew. It was like  _Bass_.  
  
He pushed his wings the hardest he could, and sped his ten tonnes to their maximum potential. He held his claws in front of him, forming a sharp point, and at the last second before hitting the substance he was trying to pierce, he folded his wings, or they would get in his way. It was like a hot knife through butter. But below the butter was a solid layer of invisible cold marble. He hit it with his snout, and could no longer see a thing, all was grey, he felt himself suspended in space between clouds and wall. "Levitas!" he screamed. "Levitas, I made it, there's a solid wall here! Come to me!"  
  
Extremely faint through all the wooshing of the wind, Levitas' familiar chirp was heard. "I never met a wall, Caesar. In the decade I spent here, I tried all the things to pierce the clouds I could imagine, but my body never got through. Either it's because I don't have your mass, or because I'm not supposed to be there. You should leave now, I am sure you can!"  
  
"But wait, Levitas, I need to tell you something!"  
  
He heard no reply. But the wind had increased in volume, and Levitas did not had a voice as loud as his. So he just postulated his theory, one part of him believing in it, one part wanting to make the little guy feel happy. Why did he want that?  
  
"Levitas, listen to me! When you let go of your concentration, you will not vanish! This is a huge egg! The Firmament isn't shrinking, you are growing! I only recognize it, because I was dreaming about it when you called me here! Your mind spent ten years building a world here, and it was so powerful I experienced it too! Perhaps the minds who are the quietest in this life, get the most power in the next! But you will live on! You will lose your memory, but be reborn in the end!"  
  
  
Caesar groaned. The wind was too loud for him to even hear his own voice. He did not know if Levitas had heard him. He could have vanished already. Or taken by Temeraire. What if it wasn't an egg? There was only one way to find out.  
  
Caesar slithered closer to the barrier, and it materialised in front of him. Movement was slow, strange forces pushed and pulled and squeezed and stretched. He heard a sound above the wind, it was the Firmament itself vibrating once more. But he recognized the phonemes immediately. It filled him with fear. He was going to end up stuck in the egg too! He closed his eyes, not that it made a difference, but it helped him concentrate. He imitated what Levitas must have been doing.  _He pictured himself a small area. He dreamt up a calm place. The New South Wales barracks. He pictured men strolling around on their daily business. He pictured the sun, moving across the sky. He imagined a drunken aviator leaning against a strutted wooden wall, bottles of cheap rum below him. He pictured himself in a clearing, gnawing on a kangaroo bone._  
  
He opened his eyes. He saw nothing but blackness. The wind had stopped, and everything felt cold. Levitas must have let himself go. But he himself wasn't free yet. Time to try again.  
  
 _He pictured himself, as a hatchling. He was sitting in his clearing, Rankin was sitting on a small bench. He was reading from that marvellous book on dragon science, what was it named again? He could not remember the name. But he remembered more. He remembered his hatching. Temeraire, or Bass, he had been warning him about the hood, the one he had torn up immediately. There were a few things wrong with that book, which Rankin had explained as not applying to him._ But Temeraire had not known that. He had been friends with Levitas, who was stuck in self-pity due to some defect in his mind. Temeraire had wanted to protect him. It had not been his right to deny him a voice. But he was acting from a good protective intent. Caesar only just felt what that was, when Levitas had been unconscious.   
  
Rankin, was he truly someone other than how he had always appeared to him? Did he really have a cruel side? Which side was the mask, and which was real?  
  
  
Caesar opened his eyes. It was light. He felt weak, but heard footsteps. He had a lot of thinking to do.


	4. Epilogue

He slithered through his sphere. Movement was slow, strange forces pushed and pulled and squeezed and stretched. He was contained, yet freer than ever, in having become more aware than before. A barrier materialised in front of Levi- Ego. His eyes were closed, but he would not have seen the difference anyway, for he felt the edge of his world with a part of his body. Before touching it, he hadn't even been sure his body had parts to it.  
  
Squirming to test the muscles, peaceful as it may be, the Firmament vibrated. It came from everywhere, but turning around revealed that in some directions it was stronger than in others. Slowly came Ego's first experience with sound. Bass, calm and melodic, kept drumming through his whole body, and over time patterns became recognizable. Different units of noise became more distinguished by the day, and an over-active mind strung the phonemes together to words, and through a process combining guesswork with some kind of magic he could not comprehend, meanings were assigned to them. It was rather easy once you had figured out that they had meaning at all, the rest was playing with a million-piece tangram until the picture made sense.  
  
Before Ego knew any words, he had started to distinct between several categories of vibration. One was the dominant, bassy and often calm, but one other seemed to use the same amount of words in a shorter time span, and most of them had a tone to them Ego took as unpleasant. The vibration of the Firmament alternated between those categories, but sometimes both were felt at the same time. It took him not long to find the word for it:  **arguing**. Bass was arguing. Bass could often be driven by the challenger to start putting more power in his voice, and when they were arguing, all the other categories faded to background chatter.  
  
The biggest change was when, due to a surge of some essence of himself that made its way to his bloodstream, Ego realised that Bass and the other one were beings, nothing different from himself. He was floating in his sphere, surrounded by the Firmament, inside which other entities lived, who could communicate. Ego squirmed. His muscles boiled, his nerves were singed, and his brain burned. He wanted to communicate, he would like to have a voice. Bass would often talk of entities that had stopped existing long ago, of nutrition, of some place called China he cared a great deal about. Ego was interested, but also wanted the freedom of expression for himself. Was that too much to ask, for one existing only for such a short time? He was pretty sure it wasn't.  
  
Ego desired freedom. The Firmament was responsible for not giving him a voice. It had shrunk dramatically over the past time, and left him so little room to move. He was stuck, and so, so hungry. He used his whole body, and stretched, bumped, pushed, rammed. Bass noticed, and started encouraging it. He called other entities, and they joined the vibrational communication. Ego felt warm, from being surrounded by people. He wanted to accomplish. A crack! - something from it came, so alien that he could not assign it by any word other than "light", one of the stranger substances Bass had told him about. He slammed himself against the crack, and little bits broke off, more of this light substance entered his sphere. He charged, and headbutted the hole with the strength of all of his body and mind, and suddenly full freedom was there, but much stranger than he had imagined. The intense daylight burned his retinas, as he had never used them before. The ooze he had thought the entire universe was filled with, was replaced by something sharp and thin, but Ego's muscles rejoiced with their liberty. A dark shape appeared above him. It opened its mouth, but a red one pushed it out of the way. "All right, hatchling, you seem okay. First things first: can you breathe fire? I could live with just fire for now, until you're old enough and we learn if you have Divine Wind too."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks AMCAlmaron and Mc-Jayster for proofreading and giving tons of suggestions to improve it!


End file.
